Interview with Lynne Sears Slouber # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Interview: January 1, 2005 Interviewer: Ellyn Bartges
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Interview with Lynne Sears Slouber # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Interview: January 1, 2005 Interviewer: Ellyn Bartges COPYRIGHT The following material can be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes without the written permission of either Ellyn Bartges (Interviewer) or the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. “Fair use” criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. These materials are not to be deposited in other repositories, nor used for resale or commercial purposes without the authorization from the Audio-Visual Curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 112 N. 6th Street, Springfield, Illinois 62701. Telephone (217) 785-7955 A Note to the Reader This transcript is based on an interview recorded by Ellyn Bartges. Readers are reminded that the interview of record is the original video or audio file, and are encouraged to listen to portions of the original recording to get a better sense of the interviewee's personality and state of mind. The interview has been transcribed in near-verbatim format, then edited for clarity and readability, and reviewed by the interviewee. For many interviews, the ALPL Oral History Program retains substantial files with further information about the interviewee and the interview itself. Please contact us for information about accessing these materials. Bartges: It is January 1, 2005. We are in Oakbrook Terrace or Westchester, Illinois, and I'm interviewing Lynne Slouber, who resides in Ephrata, Washington. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. I appreciate it, and it's good to see you. Slouber: I'm so glad we can connect. Bartges: Me too. I'm not going to waste any time. I'll jump right in here. Where did you go to high school? Slouber: I went to high school at Walther Lutheran High School in Melrose Park, and I eventually wound up teaching PE [physical education] there. Bartges: In what park? Slouber: Melrose Park. Lynne Slouber Interview # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Bartges: Melrose Park. Are you from Illinois? Slouber: Um-hmm, originally. Um-hmm. Bartges: Did you play sports in high school? Slouber: In high school, back in those days—I graduated in 1967—we certainly didn't have sports. We had GAA, which stood for Girls' Athletic Association, and that amounted to intramurals after school, and that was about it. And yes, I did that. And I did volleyball. I can remember that was a big one for me, basically because it was coed even then. Bartges: Really? Slouber: It was coed volleyball after school. But Walther was a very small school, and so we just played coed volleyball. It was a good place to meet boys, and plus, we loved volleyball. Bartges: Did you play other sports besides volleyball? Slouber: I can't remember that there were any to play. I mean back—1967, it was Girls' Athletic Association. If there were, I wasn't involved in it. Bartges: But like Lutheran didn't offer basketball and softball or track and field or archery or tennis or any of those other sports? Slouber: When I was in high school, unh-uh. It was Girls' Athletic Association. Bartges: How big was your school at that time, if you remember? Slouber: Well, maybe four hundred. There was probably less than one hundred in my graduating class. I would say maybe seventy-five to eighty, and that was—it was very small. Bartges: Was that nine through twelve? Slouber: Yeah. Bartges: And you said that was a private school. Was that religious affiliation? Slouber: Um-hmm, Lutheran. 2 Lynne Slouber Interview # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Bartges: Okay. How many GAA days a year did you have? Slouber: GAA days? Oh my gosh. Bartges: Or GAA events? Slouber: You know, it was always after school. I mean they had—oh, badminton was another one now that I think about it. We had badminton, and we had volleyball. Badminton was just with the girls though, because I can remember doing that, and volleyball was with the boys. And I think it was two days after school because there was so much other things—being a Lutheran affiliation, there was a big emphasis on choir. And the boys had football at that time, I can remember, and basketball. There was cheerleaders, and if you were a cheerleader, you were really, really hot stuff. And I can remember when you tried out for that, you had to do a cartwheel. That was the biggest— I mean, that was the hard thing that you had to do was a full cartwheel and a round off and—but other than that there weren't any that I can remember. Bartges: When you said it was after school, was it after school two days a week or three days a week? Slouber: Two days a week. Bartges: And how long did it go—hour, hour-and-a-half? Slouber: Probably an hour-and-a-half, um-hmm, because we took the bus home and sometimes it was dark. I think we were done by 4:30. Bartges: And you had a GAA leader, one of the PE teachers or— Slouber: There was only one girl PE teacher and one boy PE teacher in that school. Bartges: So you never played basketball in high school? Slouber: Never. Bartges: You said you graduated from high school in 1967. What is the highest level of education you have? Slouber: A master's degree. 3 Lynne Slouber Interview # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Bartges: Probably an MS. Slouber: M.Ed. Bartges: M.Ed.? Slouber: M.Ed. in counseling, mental health. Bartges: Where did you go to undergraduate school? Slouber: U of I Champaign-Urbana [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]. Bartges: And your undergraduate degree is in? Slouber: Physical education and health. Bartges: And your M.Ed. is from? Slouber: Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington. Bartges: Did you play sports? I'm going to focus on your undergraduate at U of I. Did you play sports in college? Slouber: No. Bartges: Not at all? Slouber: Not at all. Bartges: Okay. Are you familiar with the Postal Tournament? Slouber: You know, no. Absolutely I really am not. I have no idea of what that was about. Bartges: That's okay. Only one person (laughs) I've interviewed has known. Slouber: Oh, really? You'll have to tell me what that's about. Bartges: Did you have any experience playing in industrial leagues, basketball, AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] ball, softball, anything like that outside, extracurricular to school? 4 Lynne Slouber Interview # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Slouber: No. Bartges: How about in college? Slouber: In college U of I, hmm. Bartges: Did you play intramurals? Slouber: You know, that's so long ago. I think I played intramurals. You had to. If you were a physical education major, you had to do something. I can't remember exactly what it was. I almost want to say it was field hockey that I did, if you can believe that. Bartges: Okay. Slouber: But that was just that—no. Because at U of I, there was the really jocky people, and I think there was a couple teams there. There might have been three or four at that time. And then there were just people that wanted a degree in physical education; I was one of those people. Bartges: And what was your intent with physical education degree, just go and teach? Slouber: Yeah. I wanted to be a PE teacher. And truthfully, I thought, What a great job, you know. You play games—because I always loved physical education. I thought, Have a great—have a good time all year long, and then you had your summers off and, you know. It was just—it was the only thing I ever wanted to do aside from being a nurse, and that—I kind of quit on that because I was a candy striper there for a while at MacNeal Memorial Hospital, and I fainted at the sight of blood, and I said, "Well, that's that." Bartges: Your career's over. (laughs) Did you ever serve in the military or National Guard? Slouber: Nope. Bartges: Did you teach or coach in a secondary school system? Slouber: In a secondary school—like a high school? Bartges: High school, yeah. Slouber: Oh, absolutely. Everywhere I went I had to coach. 5 Lynne Slouber Interview # DGB-V-D-2005-005 Bartges: How many years did you teach? Slouber: Seven. Bartges: And where did you teach? Slouber: My first job was at Urbana High School in Urbana, Illinois. Bartges: And how long there? Slouber: I was there for one year. And there I had to coach synchronized swimming, which really wasn't coaching anything. We did a big show at the end of the year and that was that. And I also coached track there as well. Bartges: And after Urbana where did you go? Slouber: From there I went to Walther, and I was there two years. And there—as I had mentioned before, there was only one girl PE teacher, one boy PE teacher who also was the athletic director, he was. And there I had to coach everything. I coached gymnastics—but when I say coached, it was just like we did gymnastics after school. We weren't competitive with another school. Bartges: So you didn't have competitions versus other schools? Slouber: Not in gymnastics; in basketball we did. In basketball we did, but not gymnastics. I must have done volleyball in there as well. Oh, something else at Urbana High School that I had to run was coed volleyball for adults at night.